It was some time before she answered him. She sat staring at him, like trying to screw up her nerve to say whatever it was that was still on her mind. Outside a car drove up, then passed the three cars on the loop, my car, my mother’s car, and Sid’s car, then drove off again without stopping. I didn’t pay much attention, remembering what she had said about people that wouldn’t come in if they saw certain cars out front. Turned out that was the reason, but in a way different from what she had meant, and a lot more important.
“It’s got to do with a rat, leaving his kin to die, so he could keep their share of the bundle of money they’d made.”
She said it at last, and it was Sid’s turn to stare, as though figuring how much she knew. Then, kind of hoarse, he asked: “When did I do that?”
“The day the top fell down in that dead entry you used to get to the still you had, in the old Ajax number three—as everything started to shake, when the strip shovel started up on the other side of the mountain. With that top blocking passage, it meant those boys were trapped. But they could have been saved, couldn’t they? Could have been gotten out, if you’d put in a call about them, to Ajax, the police, or someone. But no! That would have tied you in to the still, and besides, there was the cash, the money that had piled up, that still hadn’t been split. So you didn’t call, did you? You just walked away from those boys, said they’d gone West in their car, let them stay in that mine—which is where they are now, isn’t it? Isn’t it!”
There was a long argument then, but what they said I don’t rightly recall, as I suddenly had the feeling, whether from something I heard, or from a hunch I had, that something was behind me, out there in the hall. And I must have made some motion or tipped it where my mind was, because instead of answering her, he whipped the gun around, so it pointed straight at my gut, and told me: “Stay where you’re at! Don’t move or you get it!”
I stayed where I was, I promise you, but I kept trying to think what was next on his schedule, as bringing someone in, someone to sneak up behind us, didn’t seem to make sense, unless he wanted help carrying bodies down to the river or something like that. However, all I actually did, with that gun looking at me, was sit there, without moving, as he said. In a moment he turned back to my mother, telling her: “I don’t have to answer you.” And then: “Do I?”
“I guess not,” she whispered.
“Is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
“I thought it was.”
He patted the gun, said “Now” as though getting ready to talk, and let a grin spread over his face. But at that she really exploded: “It’s not all, it’s not all! I haven’t even started yet!”
“Oh yes you have—it’s all!”
“Mother,” I couldn’t help saying, “for God’s sake!”
“It’s not all. I’m going to say it and nothing can stop me! You said they’d left for the West, that they’d driven off in their car—but there their car was at your house. So you hid it in the woods and that night drove it here. And next day, when David had gone in to work, you let her show you where, and toppled it into the river. But that left the money, which if found on you could have got you 20 years in prison. And she put it away for you, with you rowing the johnboat, in that place where she hid that bag, in that very selfsame tree you knew she’d use, to hide something in a hurry. So you knew where the poke was, so you took it. Didn’t you?”
“Myra, for the second and I hope the last time, I don’t have to answer on every crazy thing you dream up.”
“I didn’t dream about your money in that tree. Myra told me.”
“Goddamn it, shut up!”
“Sid, where’s the poke?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“How? Find out?”
“We’re searching your car, that’s how.”
He got up, motioning at us, with the gun, to head for the front door. I edged toward it, but she didn’t. She got up, turned her back on him, and picked the mink coat up, where it was spread on a chair at the far end of the room. She was slipping it on with a little go-to-hell smile, when suddenly he burst out: “Being a rat to my kin, hey?—and look, just look who’s talking! Myra, you got a gall, you got a nerve, to say what you did, the trick you played on her—on Little Myra, my sister, your cousin, your kin. Having this goddamn bastard, right there in Marietta, and then putting it on her! Saying she was the one, and making her raise him for you! Oh yes you did, and she had to—she couldn’t turn down the money, that clinker she was going to marry, little as he made or ever would make in his life. So, looking you in the eye and meaning every word, I say you’re a whore.”
“I say you’re a thief.”
“Come on!”
It was around 6:30, still daylight, when we went out front, and I looked around for the other car that had driven up in the hope I could yell for help and have them go call the officers. But it wasn’t anywhere in sight. Sid chunked my ribs with the gun and told me to open my car. I did and he looked inside, finding nothing, of course. Then he told Mother to open her car. She did and he looked again. Two dresses were hanging up, in front of the back seat. He used the gun to flip them, but of course saw nothing behind them. Then he said: “OK, kid, I’m going to open my car, and you’re going to search it, see?”
He handed me his keys, and when I hesitated, chunked the gun into my ribs once more. I did as he said, opening the doors. It was a buzzard’s roost inside, full of all kinds of stuff, a case of empty bottles, magazines, a hacksaw, coils of rubber tubing, a bra, anything you could think of—but no bag. He had me open the trunk, and no bag was there, either. He snapped the trunk lid down, locked it, and snarled: “Get in the house, you two! Get in and close the door! Get in there and stay there, or I’m letting you have it!”
“Letting us have it!” she half whispered, “that’s what he thinks! I’m letting him have it, now—if it’s the last thing I do on this earth!” She went out in the hall and back to the kitchen, then at once came whirling back. “What did you do with it?” she half screamed at me. “In God’s name, Dave, where is it?”
“What?”
“That rifle!”
“What the hell? I didn’t do anything with it!”
“It’s not there!”
She went to the front door to look out. A shot came from outside, splintering the lintel over her head. She dropped to the floor while I went to the window to look. By then he was circling the loop, and it suddenly was made clear why he’d parked as he had, ahead of the other cars. He wanted to have a clear track if he had to get out quick. He rolled on, then came to the lane and turned into it. That’s when she grabbed my arm.
Because there from the side of the house, in the gathering dark, came a shadow I didn’t recognize. Then I could see it was Jill, carrying the Springfield. She took a few steps, then stopped. Then she planted herself and raised the rifle. For a long second she didn’t move. Then fire cut the twilight, and there came that sharp little crack a rifle makes when fired outdoors. Then the left rear tire of Sid’s car coughed, wobbled, and went flat. He kept on going, turning from the loop into the lane. He opened up to gain speed, but the car started to buck. Then it yawed, as the front wheels cut left. Then it started to slide, down the gully beside the lane. Then suddenly it toppled, with all four wheels in the air, the front two spinning around. The top of the car had been mashed as flat as the hood and trunk. By that time, my mother and I had run out, and Jill was there in the lane, screaming and weeping, and pointing, at what was under the car—or on top of it, actually, as it stuck there, upside down. “There it is!” she yelped at the top of her lungs. “Oh please! Help me! Before it catches fire and burns up!”
And sure enough, there was the zipper bag, tied by its strap to the intake pipe of the tank and safe from all ordinary search. She began clawing at it, but it was knotted hard, and she kept breaking her fingernails and shaking them and sucking them. I took out my knife and started to open it, to cut
the strap loose for her. But I changed my mind as I happened just then to remember what she’d accused me of. I stood there and watched her claw. At last she got the strap loose, grabbed the bag to her chest, and cuddled it as though it was a newborn child or something. She broke down in my mother’s arms, letting go of the rifle. I caught it as it fell, and my mother said: “Dave, stand by while I take her inside and get her calmed down. I’ll call the sheriff’s office. They’ll have to take charge of this. But Sid’s still in that car and he still has that gun. Watch him—watch him every minute.”
She took Jill in the house but not till she’d held her close and whispered in her ear: “I’m proud of you, Jill. You did it just right, our way, the mountain way, the way I wanted to.” And then, to me: “She’s one of us now, Dave.”
“Who is us?” I heard myself growl. “If you’re talking about me, leave me out.”
“You bet I’m leaving you out!” snapped Jill. “Why didn’t you lend me that knife? I saw you take it out. You had it right in your hand! Why didn’t you pass it to me?”
“Why should I lend you a knife? It’s your money, it’s what you care about—far be it for me to sully it up with my hands or my well-sullied knife.”
“Dave!” screamed my mother.
“Take her inside!” I bellowed, “or you got a job on your hands, getting me calmed down!”
23
AS THEY WENT IN the house Jill was wailing: “He has two thousand dollars of mine right in his wallet. If that car burns up, I’ll lose it!” And I thought to myself: If I ever was sick of something, it’s that two thousand dollars and all the rest of the dough. My mother took her inside and for a half hour or more, after my mother called out the door, “They’re on their way!” there was nothing for me to do but patrol up and down with the rifle, now and then calling to Sid, to find out how he was, and if there was some way that I could get him out. However, no answer came from the crumpled interior of the car. Then at last, turning into the lane was a car with Edgren and Mantle in it, leading a tow car in, and following that an ambulance. First thing was to right the overturned car, which was tough, as the tow car had to cut over, into the open field, run their tow line across, shackle on to an axle, and pull. But the ground was soft from being wet in spring, and its wheels kept spinning around, digging in deeper and deeper, so for a moment it looked like it was going to need help to get out, too. But all of a sudden Sid’s car banged down on its wheels and the intern, the one who came with the ambulance, opened the door. At once he stepped back, making a sign like an umpire calling a runner safe, and said: “That’s it!” Then: “OK, we’ll take him in. Where to? Which undertaker?”
“Santos,” Edgren told him.
When the ambulance had gone off and the tow car had gone off hauling what was left of Sid’s car behind it, Edgren and Mantle came in the house to question me, my mother, and Jill, but mainly Jill. Edgren, now that the case was solved, and in a way that did not make him look silly at all, was nice as pie to Jill, coming back to it several times: “You had reason to think that this man had taken your money, that he had it in the car, and you shot his tire out to stop him. What reason did you have to think so?”
She said she had driven out to the house, “to talk some more to this lady, find how things were going, whether she’d heard anything, or had something to tell me. Then I saw this car, and remembered it from before, when that man Giles had come and Mr. Howell had kicked him out. So I kept right on around, around the loop I mean, passing the other cars, and started back toward the highway. But then I thought I’d better go back and see what’s going on. So I parked at the side of the lane and slid down in the gully. I followed it around, then cut to the back of the house and went in the kitchen door. I took care to make no noise, and went through the hall, till I was close to the arch, that one there, where I could hear what was being said. Then here all three of them came, on their way out to the cars, and I stepped in under the stairs. I was pretty scared, as I thought that man might kill me—my second close call of that kind, all in less than a week. But he didn’t, and soon as all three were out I ducked back to the kitchen, grabbed that rifle and went outside. I kept close to the house, and heard him order them back, Mr. Howell and his mother, into the house again. Soon as he started his car I pulled the bolt and got ready. And then—”
“Just a minute,” Edgren cut in. “You knew this man was armed, and shot out his tire as one way of protecting yourself, of saving your life perhaps—”
“Something like that,” she answered. “I’d a lot rather that man should stop and look down the barrel of my gun, instead of me looking down his.”
“OK,” said Edgren. He turned to Mantle, who looked at the notes he’d been taking. “That covers it,” he said, “except for one thing: From what Mr. Howell has told us and what his mother has said, when this man’s wallet is searched, a flock of twenties will be in it, maybe a hundred, amounting to two thousand bucks. Do you claim that money as yours?”
“I hope to tell you I do.”
Jill banged it back real quick, and Mantle played his ballpoint on his teeth. “You have any proof it belongs to you?” he asked her.
She started to tell how Mr. Morgan had given it to her, but then stopped, seeing right away that that wasn’t the trouble. What had to be proved was that the two thousand bucks in the wallet was part of the Morgan gift. They all three looked at each other and I guess I got in it. “You impounded the proof of this money,” I told Edgren. “On that tape Officer Mantle found was the record of copies made, of the Xerox pictures they took, of the bills that tape was around, and—”
“They’ll show it,” he cut in. “That’s right, that makes it simple. We call Chicago, they look up their Xerox pictures, get us the numbers—and that does it. OK, that straightens us out.” Then: “Are we done?” he asked Mantle.
“Not quite,” Mantle answered, clicking his pen on his teeth once more. “Her shooting his tire out was justifiable, along the line of a citizen’s arrest, if she knew he had her money. But as it hadn’t been found, she didn’t know it, really. But, on the basis of what she heard, listening in from the hall, she knew, she knew for certain, that whether he had the big pot, the cash in the zipper bag, he did have that two thousand bucks, in twenties there in his wallet—and she had to know it was hers—”
“So there was a corpus delicti,” said Edgren, “a corpus she knew about.” And then, to Jill: “A corpus delicti, miss, doesn’t always mean a body. It generally means that, too, but mainly it means evidence a crime was committed.”
“And it’s important,” said Mantle, pretty solemn. “In this case, especially.”
“Very important,” said Edgren.
“Thanks, Dave!” sobbed Jill, coming over and grabbing my hand. However, I shook her off. “I don’t want your thanks,” I told her, “or any part of you.” She crumpled up on the sofa and really started to bawl. “Dave,” snapped my mother, “you must be under a strain—I think you forget yourself. If you’re going to marry this girl—?”
“I’m not! Stop trying to say I am!”
By then Edgren and Mantle were at the door. Edgren made a stiff little speech: “Thanks ever so much, Mrs. Howell,” he began.
“Miss Giles,” she corrected.
“Mrs. Giles, I’m sorry.”
“Miss Giles, I’m not married.”
“Miss Giles, for being so cooperative.”
My mother bowed, her face set, as though it was chiseled in marble.
“Mr. Howell, thanks for your help, and Miss Kreeger—”
But all Jill did was bawl, and on that pleasing note the officers finally left.
24
SO, NOT TO STRING it out, they had the inquest Tuesday, by now a week late, kind of a triple, in one of Santos’ parlors, with the coroner, Dr. Snyder, a jury of six people pulled in from the street, Mr. Knight, for the state’s attorney’s office, and Mr. Bledsoe, for my mother, Jill, and me. And three verdicts were brought, two of homicide,
justifiable, and one of accident, by drowning, with nobody held. So that rang down the curtain, and the three of us walked out free.
Then one thing happened that I’ll get to, but after that nothing at all for two or three months. My mother went back to Indianapolis and called often but didn’t come out any more. Then, however, things happened and happened fast. The wire came from Arizona, and my father at last was free. So in a few days he and my mother got married, and showed up in his car, a big Rolls limousine, with him and my mother in back, and his secretary and the driver up front—with grins on everyone’s face and an invitation to the bridal supper in one of Marietta’s swank hotels. His name, it turned out, is John Gilmore Rider, who I’d heard of as the president of Husky Bus Lines, but it turned out that was a sideline with him. He was mainly president of Polaris Oil, which had started Husky 20-odd years before as a way of using up surplus gas. It also turned out how he and my mother had met. It was in Logan County, West Virginia, when she was a secretary for the Boone County Coal Corporation, at Clothier, and he was a young stockholder of Polaris, locating bus lines for them. He began taking charge of my life, how I should change my name to correspond, go to Cornell, to finish my college education, then move to Oklahoma to learn the ropes at Polaris, so I could succeed him as president when he felt he ought to retire. But I told him to back it up, that I’d decide those things, not he, and it made him laugh. But just to act friendly with him, I did agree to tape up all that happened, from the time Shaw came down until the inquest was over, so his secretary could type it up, and he would know everything. So I did, and this is it. Nothing’s been settled yet, but I image I’ll go to Cornell, and eventually head for Tulsa.
So that takes care of him, my mother, and me, but it doesn’t take care of one other, and maybe a wedding we had, some weeks before my mother’s. But to explain about her, and how one thing led to another, I’ll have to backtrack a bit to that same afternoon after the officers left and we were all three sitting there—my mother, Jill, and me in the living room of my house—or at least my mother and I were, with Jill stretched out on the sofa. And my mother closed her eyes, saying: “How wonderful it would be if that phone were to ring right now, with the news I’ve been praying for. No, I don’t pray for it, I wouldn’t pray for somebody’s death, but if it has to come, why couldn’t it come now, so we could have it double, a real ceremony!”